The Blood of Dawnwalker features a corruption levelling system that unlocks additional vampire abilities, such as faster wolf-form traversal, lifesteal and boosted corruption gains, making it central to developing the game's Vrakhiri vampire mechanics. The only way to raise corruption is by drinking blood, either through the Voracious Bite ability used on humans and animals or by consuming vials of blood found as loot, giving players two complementary routes to progress this system.

Corruption gains scale with the size of the target when using Voracious Bite, with small creatures like rabbits yielding little and larger targets like deer or humans yielding more, and it can be used even at full health. Not all blood vials count, only those that restore vampiric health, so items like beast's bane brew do not contribute despite appearing blood-based. Players can accelerate progress further via the Hastened Corruption skill in the Vampirism tree, unlocked after investing in Nourishing Blood and reaching corruption level 1, which offers tiered bonuses including overfeeding effects, faster corruption filling and increased vampiric health per level.